


Bloom

by tawktomahawk



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Brienne as Lady Stoneheart, Bittersweet Ending, F/M, I tried my best to keep Brienne in character, but the Lady Stoneheart arc is vengeful and I did want to retain some of it, note the warning for character death, partially inspired by Romeo & Juliet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:28:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawktomahawk/pseuds/tawktomahawk
Summary: "What do you suggest, my Lady? An attack on their camp in the night?"Bloodthirsty Brothers, she should call them. Lady Blueheart is still the Evenstar, dimmer now and more ghastly than ever, but she will always lead with mercy. She knows only one life will need to be taken.“Jaime Lannister,” Blueheart whispers. “Fetch Jaime Lannister. Tell him I wish to speak to him.”
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 24
Kudos: 53





	Bloom

**Author's Note:**

> reminder: bittersweet ending (but I tried to keep it semi-happy!). not trying to lead you into the void in times like these :)

_There is fresh soil here. In the After. It is plowed, light, and fragrant. She can plant flowers and kiss Jaime among the blossoms in spring._

_Jaime. Oh, Jaime. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

* * *

Justice is death done up. Made pretty. 

Lady Blueheart shatters the illusion. There is too much pain in the world to build a home from innocence. True goodness is a smile with teeth. 

Perhaps that is why only one as grotesque as she could be Justice’s champion. Before, she was Brienne of Tarth. Now, she is Lady Blueheart. Not at first, not always, but forevermore. 

She sees now that innocence is a slippery, upward slope. One can cling to its mossy face and climb desperately towards its blissful summit, but one wrong step and man plunges to the valley below. Grief, guilt, and honor live there. Nearly everything does. Brienne of Tarth made it higher than most. Her maiden's heart pushed her skyward. 

She began to slip when she discovered the body of Lady Catelyn. It lay bloated on the river bank, her pale throat slit from ear to ear. Her auburn hair was dark with water and mud. Brienne had cried into the fresh soil of Lady Catelyn’s grave. Failure was a parasite in her gut, and it began to eat. 

She slipped further when Jaime Lannister confessed to her what he’d done to young Brandon Stark. She’d thought him a man of honor. A savior of cities. She had known he was also a crippler of children. Still, Brienne clung to their vow; it was proof of his goodness. Save the Stark girls. What remained of the vow was hers and Jaime’s to fulfill. But he'd disappointed her in King's Landing.

_Take this sword_ , he’d told her. _Take this ugly mare. And take this armor, too, for it is a dangerous quest, and I will not leave my sister to help you._

Brienne searched for Sansa and Arya for many moons. There were whispers of a mysterious girl in the Vale, the bastard daughter of one slimy Petyr Baelish, but she was not Sansa. The whispers were only whispers. Brienne continued to search. Failure ate at her with every passing day. 

Huddled against the warm stomach of her sleeping mare, she woke one autumn night to the cracking of twigs. 

“What’s your business in these woods?” A man asked. He yielded a blood-crusted knife and leered at her with sunken, yellow cheeks. Lem Lemoncloak, she later learned, as she advised him to clean his blade.

“I seek the daughters of the late Lady Catelyn.” 

A well-muscled boy came forward, then. Brienne gasped when she saw him. He looked like Renly—raven hair and a strong jaw. A solid chest. Brienne slipped further towards despair at the reminder of her King, murdered by a Shadow in the night. 

“You seek Arya Stark?” The man bared his teeth. He was more vicious than Renly, Brienne thought. _Good_. 

“Yes," she told him simply. "To return her to her living family.” 

The boy's face had softened a touch. He’d shared a look with his companions, hidden within the thicket of trees in the dark. “I seek her as well," the boy said. "You need allies. Let us help you.” 

She let them. The men were the Brotherhood Without Banners, but after a single moon, they followed her as if she were their guiding star. 

They collected a young boy along the way: Podrick Payne. He followed Brienne like a child, and she began to care for him as one. He stuttered his way through conversation and performed a squire’s duties with a sweetness she worried the world would steal. Brienne’s heart clenched with fondness at the sight of him. 

She slipped far towards the valley when Podrick was killed. His murderers were two Bolton footsoldiers. They'd crossed by chance on the King’s Road. Podrick—sweet, foolish Podrick—he’d been first in their way. Brienne could hardly look at his small body. She’d asked Gendry to dig him a grave, but Thoros had demanded they burn it. The smell made them wretch, and Brienne watched the smoke float to the sky and drift away on the afternoon’s breeze. 

Stopping at the inn near the Crossroads was Brienne’s fatal mistake. Most of the Brotherhood camped beyond the trees; she and a few others had only stopped to collect food and listen to the whispers. 

It was a fruitless exercise. Only children milled about.

"We're orphaned," one small boy told her as she supped. Thoros and Gendry stared into the fire behind her and wet their throats with ale. 

The straw hair at her neck had bristled when she heard the shouts from outside. The children had frozen and stared at her with wide, pleading eyes. Fear clouded their innocent faces. _Save us_ , they begged wordlessly. 

Brienne had tried.

She had tried her best against seven men. When she felt her arm break beneath Biter’s hands, when she saw him lean to tear into her cheek with his sharpened teeth and chew—then, she knew she failed. Biter slid his dagger from her hand and plunged it into her gut. 

She heard shouts in the distance, but she was already fading. Down, down she fell. Into the valley below. She refused to close her eyes, but the darkness came, regardless. 

Death was brief and painless, but Thoros tore her from it. 

“The rest of the Brotherhood came for us, and we escaped,” Thoros explained. The orphans crowded around her. Gendry stood with his hands on their shoulders. “I saw your face in the flames at the inn. We brought your body with us. I gave you the kiss of life. Fire’s kiss. You’re here with us again. For a greater purpose.” 

“Again.” Her voice was rasping and unrecognizable to her own ears. She felt scrambled inside. Herself, but colder. More bitter. Her cheek still ached. Her gut oozed blackened blood and pained her, but death was past—not future. 

“Welcome back, Brienne,” Gendry said. Gentle. She thought of Renly, then flicked the misshapen memory away. 

“Brienne of Tarth lives no longer.” 

Thoros nodded. His eyes glinted. “We will follow you, my Lady, as the flames bid us.” 

“Vengeance,” she whispered. “Against those who have sown pain.” 

They nodded grimly—the children, too—and Lady Blueheart was born anew.

* * *

They kill the Freys first. Not all of them, but certainly old Walder and the men foolish enough to protect him. Lady Blueheart demands that all deaths be clean. Death is mercy, for all the pain these men have wrought.

Blueheart's body never heals. Her cheek peels away from the bone. Her gut is still torn open. With her wounds and lank clumps of matted hair, Lady Blueheart is a true beast. Edmure Tully cringes at the sight of her, but he lets the Brotherhood leave the Twins with a trembling nod. They’ve done him a favor, after all. 

The Brotherhood admire her, believe in her, but they are more thirsty for blood than she. Thoros never ceases to remind her of their long list of enemies. He convinces her to seek the Companions again. _Revenge,_ he hums _. The Companions ride for Maidenpool._ Lady Blueheart glances at the children warming their palms by the fire, and she nods. 

They find the Companions on the road to the Whispers. Biter is already dead—Gendry killed him, Blueheart learns—but Rorge lives on. Blueheart kills him viciously. For a moment, vengeance curls inside her and she strikes, removing Shagwell’s hand before she plunges her dagger into his gut.

_Jaime_ , she thinks. Her chest throbs.

She kills Pyg and Timeon with two cleaving swipes. Septon Utt screams somewhere behind her, but Blueheart has killed enough for one day. She digs Oathkeeper’s tip into the dirt and bends her head. _The world is better now,_ she tells herself. Septon Utt’s screams cease. 

They don’t immediately set out to kill the Boltons, but whispers reveal that the Flayed Man flies in Winterfell, where he doesn’t belong. The Brotherhood follow Blueheart into the cold North. They kill Roose Bolton first, the worst of the lot, and then they kill his bastard son. Jeyne Poole fears Blueheart at first, but she joins their group easily enough. One of the orphans—Tansy—takes Jeyne into her arms reassuringly. Jeyne stays with them henceforth. 

For a while, they are without a target, even as war lingers in Westeros. Their veins are emptied of vengeance, and the men of the Brotherhood are agitated. They twitch in their sleep and sweat before the campfire. As they bicker amongst themselves, Lady Blueheart begins to fade. 

“The source of this scourge,” Thoros whispers in her ear, urging her onwards. Gendry says the same, reminding her that Arya and Sansa are nowhere to be found: not now, not then, not ever. Winter is already pushing them south with every passing day. What else is there to do? 

“The Lannisters,” the bitter Brotherhood whispers, and Lady Blueheart leads them back to Riverrun. 

* * *

“The Lannisters have sent an envoy to negotiate with the Blackfish.” Thoros sneers as a scout relays the information. Brienne doesn’t respond. She’d have to press her hand against her cheek, and it hurts—even now, it hurts. Everything hurts. 

“What do you suggest, my Lady? An ambush? Or perhaps an attack in the night?”

She brings her hand to her cheek. “Neither.” Bloodthirsty Brothers, she should call them. She is still the Evenstar, dimmer now and more ghastly than ever, but she will always demand mercy. Lady Blueheart knows only one life will need to be taken. 

“Jaime Lannister,” she whispers. “Fetch Jaime Lannister. Tell him I wish to speak to him.”

Time blurs in Blueheart's broken body. It feels as if she waits for Jaime for an eternity. He stumbles into their camp the next morning, followed closely by Gendry. Her back is turned to them, and her head is tipped up to admire the dawn sky. The sun is thin and golden. Dew glistens on her sword’s pommel. 

“Leave my blade,” Jaime Lannister hisses behind her. “I’ve no intention to harm her.” 

Lady Blueheart hums at his words. Her heart wants to clench, but it is frozen and still and does nothing but throb at the sound of his voice. She presses her hand to her torn cheek and turns. 

Gendry has pulled Jaime’s arms behind his back. Lem pulls his Valyrian sword from the scabbard on his right hip, and Blueheart’s hand twitches.

Before her is a man of patchwork honor. She remembers him so well. Before death, before pain, the girl named Brienne would have forgiven him anything. Now, the pain he has rendered is all Lady Blueheart sees. 

The Freys, the Starks, the Boltons: so much of the world’s pain traces back to him. 

Her stomach twists, and she abandons her sword’s pommel to press at the hole in her gut. Black, sticky blood stains her tattered jerkin, oozing as she inhales a rattling breath. 

She raises her chin and looks at him. _There are tears in his eyes,_ Blueheart notes, though his cheeks are still dry. 

Jaime twists viciously in Gendry’s grip. He spits at the feet of Thoros of Myr. Lem rails his fist against Jaime’s stubbled cheek, and Jaime roars. 

“What have you done to her?” He is vicious and snarling. “Who did this? I’ll tear the tongue from his throat. Match his wounds to hers seven times over. I’ll let him bleed into the soil and I’ll leave him to _rot._ ” 

Fury turns him rabid. Blueheart watches. Her cheek throbs in time with her heart. 

“Ser Jaime.” 

The golden man freezes, stricken. Lady Blueheart’s voice is garbled and scratched, like delicate skin scraping against rough stone. Jaime reaches for her. 

“Brienne,” he pleads. 

“Do you beg for your life?” She wheezes. 

Jaime recoils. “ _Never_. I beg for yours, my Lady.” 

“You will die, Ser Jaime.” She pulls her hand from her stomach and grips her sword’s pommel.

Jaime’s eyes flick from the wound in her gut to the hole in her cheek. They rest on the pommel of her sword. Her relic from Before. She does not feel, not anymore, but the pommel seems to caress her in return. She grips it tighter. Jaime’s face twists. Anguish, she would have called it once. The crumpling of his mouth, the glaring of his nostrils, the wetness in his eyes. The sight does not pierce her. She is already ridden with wounds. 

“You are the end of it all, Jaime Lannister,” Blueheart manages to say. “The beginning and end of pain.” 

Jaime falls to his knees. “I hope you’re right,” he whispers. 

“We will hear your last words now, should you like to speak them.” _Death must be clean and merciful,_ thinks Lady Blueheart, _to make sense_. 

“You will be the one to do it,” Jaime demands. Perhaps he asks. His green eyes are softer than she expected. 

Blueheart nods once. “Yes.” 

Jaime looks to the ground and then back up at her, up and up and up. When his eyes land on hers, they fill with wetness again. 

“There will always be pain, wench.” He gazes at her for three beats of a living heart, and then, he closes his eyes. 

_He is at peace_ , the innocent girl named Brienne might once have said. _He is ready_ , Lady Blueheart knows. 

She swings Oathkeeper in the name of Justice, as she always does. Jaime Lannister’s head is cleaved from his body in a clean arc, graceful even in grisly death. His body slumps at her feet.

The clearing is silent. 

The heart in Blueheart's chest seizes at the sight of his head in the dirt. She drops Oathkeeper, and her gut begins to bleed anew. Blood from her cheek begins to slip down her cheek. There is no wetness inside her to fall from her eyes, but her throat and temples begin to ache. 

“Jaime,” she whispers. Horror wells within her.

His golden curls are dampened with blood. _There will always be pain._

_“Jaime,”_ Lady Blueheart keens. She falls to her knees. Her porous bones crack beneath her weight, but she crawls to him, to his head, and touches the curve of his jaw. Her fingertips are blue and raw. She touches him carefully. He is still so warm compared to her. 

“Jaime,” she whispers, cradling his head in her lap. Blood stains her thigh. She rocks back and forth on her knees. The wail she releases is as inhuman as she. 

“Kill me.” She shouts frantically, cradling Jaime’s head in her arms like a babe. 

Thoros approaches with his hands held before him. His voice is stern. “The flames say—“ 

“Kill me.” Blueheart rants the words over and over again. _Kill me, kill me, kill me. Jaime, Jaime, Jaime._

“You serve a greater purpose, my Lady!”

She staggers to her feet and stumbles towards Thoros, clutching Jaime’s head to her chest. “Kill me. Please," Blueheart begs. "I am already dead.” 

It is Gendry who does it. Perhaps he feels guilty that she died in the first place. He picks up Oathkeeper and swings it in one great arc, and Jaime was wrong.

There is no more pain.

* * *

_I thought I’d have to wait an eternity for you. So soon, wench?_

_Jaime._ He stands a few paces from her, healthy and whole in a sun-soaked valley sheltered by towering mountains. Brienne reaches out to touch him, and her fingers are warm on his smooth cheek. _Jaime, are these the Seven Hells?_

_If you’re here, wench, it’s none of them._

_Jaime,_ she clutches him. _I’m sorry._

_Don’t be._ He grips her hand in his. 

_Is there still pain in the world?_ Brienne asks, still needing to know _._

Jaime's thumb brushes against her hand. _We’re no longer of the world, sweetling. Let it go. Let the pain go._

Her heart breaks, and she feels tears spring to her eyes. They slip down her cheeks. She reaches up to touch her wound, but it is painless. A mere scar. 

_Where do we go, Jaime?_

_We follow the sun. We kiss beneath the stars. We fashion swords from sticks and spar._

_For how long?_

_Forevermore._

Does peace succeed pain? Brienne isn’t sure. But love succeeds life, and that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Do I think Brienne would survive Jaime’s death? Yes. Do I think if she were a Justice-driven half-dead creature she’d be a little f*cked up at the realization she killed someone she loved? Maybe. Apologies for the Romeo & Juliet vibes. I'm on tumblr (tawktomahawk) if you wanna cry or yell at me! Thank you so much for reading :) I'd love to hear your thoughts!


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